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Abstract

Research on the relationship between grammatical aspect and motion
event construal has posited that speakers of non-aspect languages are more
prone to encoding event endpoints than are speakers of aspect languages (e.g.,
von Stutterheim and Carroll 2011). In the present study, we test this hypothesis
by extending this line of inquiry to Afrikaans, a non-aspect language which
is previously unexplored in this regard. Motion endpoint behavior among
Afrikaans speakers was measured by means of a linguistic retelling task and a nonlinguistic
similarity judgment task, and then compared with the behavior of
speakers of a non-aspect language (Swedish) and speakers of an aspect language
(English). Results showed the Afrikaans speakers’ endpoint patterns aligned with
Swedish patterns, but were significantly different from English patterns. It was
also found that the variation among the Afrikaans speakers could be partially
explained by taking into account their frequency of use of English, such that
those who used English more frequently exhibited an endpoint behavior that was
more similar to English speakers. The current study thus lends further support
to the hypothesis that speakers of different languages attend differently to event
endpoints as a function of the grammatical category of aspect.